Dr. Lyon Playfair made an admirable speech on Monday, in
asking for a Select Committee to consider how Ministerial respon- sibility may be made more efficient in the administration of the votes for Education, Science, and Art. He pointed out how ill-digested and anomalous the system now is,—how it had been neces- sary, for instance, in the last Administration to give the Vice- President of the Council, as representing the Government on Education questions in the House of Commons, a seat in the Cabinet, so that if he had differed from his responsible chief, he had every opportunity of defending his own views and upsetting those of his chief,—and further, how unfounded a claim the Duke of Richmond made the other day, when he called him- self, as President of the Council, the Education Minister of the United Kingdom, though he does not deal in any way with even the primary system of education in Ireland, has no right to inspect and no responsibility for the secondary system in either England or Scotland, and has absolutely no duties at all in rela- tion to the Universities. Dr. Playfair also showed how ill-organised is the control of the Government over the various national collec- tions of antiquities, science, and art, which are half wasted for the want of a little authority to revise their relations to each other, and make them all useful to the nation; and he proved that the expenditure of nearly £4,000,000 a year ought to be under the supervision of the Education Department, while very near £2,000,000 a year already is under its care, without the proper concentration of responsibility in any one man's hands. The speech was an exceedingly able one, and concluded with a passage of remarkable eloquence on the happy-go-lucky way in which.
we are setting about the construction of what bide fair to be, to some extent, an educational Babel, for want of proper organisa- tion and guida,nce.
